In this series of blog posts, I’ll discuss F99/K00 grants. My National Institute on Aging (NIA) F99 grant funded the final 1.5 years of my doctoral studies, and the K00 piece of my grant will fund four years of my postdoctoral work — that’s six years of funding — which is huge!
F99/K00s are relatively new mechanisms in the world of NIH fellowship grants, so many folks aren’t aware that they exist. Many instead apply only for F31s or F32s, which provide only doctoral or postdoctoral funding, respectively. My biggest takeaway message from these posts will be this: apply for an F99 if you have the opportunity to! Receiving one will remove stress from the final years of your PhD (e.g., if you’re funding your PhD by serving as a teaching assistant, this will “buy you out” of teaching). Additionally, (and very importantly) the attached postdoctoral funding will provide you with massive flexibility in where you go for a postdoc — because you will be paying your own postdoc salary!
I’ll discuss more details later. First:
What are F99/K00s?
According to NIH’s website:
The purpose of the Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Fellow Transition Award (F99/K00) is to encourage and retain outstanding graduate students who have demonstrated potential and interest in pursuing careers as independent researchers. The award will facilitate the transition of talented graduate students into successful research postdoctoral appointments.
https://researchtraining.nih.gov/programs/fellowships/F99-K00
In essence, they are NIH training fellowships – intended to augment the end of your PhD studies with new training experiences and provide you with comprehensive training as a postdoc.
The “F” portion of the grant (i.e., the “F99 phase”) provides you with up to 2 years of PhD funding. Thus, this mechanism is meant to fund the end of your PhD studies.
The “K” portion of the grant (i.e., the “K00 phase”) provides you with up to 4 years of postdoctoral funding. In my case, the fourth year of K funding is contingent on applying for a K99/R00 grant during the third year of my postdoc (Many folks are more familiar with K99’s. Whereas an F99/K00 is a PhD > postdoc transitional award, a K99/R00 is a postdoc > faculty award.)
How are F99/K00s different from F31s or F32s?
The short answer: an F31 only provides PhD funding, and an F32 only provides postdoctoral funding. An F99/K00 provides both. (Again, the “F” part being the PhD funding and the “K” part being the postdoc funding.)
The longer answer: F99/K00s provide more money and more flexibility. For instance, in regard to postdoc funding, you’d typically apply for an F32 either while you’re still a PhD student but talking with potential postdoc advisors (e.g., you’re at the very end of your PhD and reach out to a super cool PI who says they’d love to have you as a postdoc but they have no grant money to pay you – so you’d need to find your own). Or, you’d write an F32 during the first year of your postdoc with your new advisor (and if you’re successful, by the time the funding comes in, you’re probably 1+ years into your postdoc already). By contrast, with an F99/K00 you can contact potential postdoc advisors already knowing that you’ll have 4 years of funding. This opens up many doors for securing the best possible postdoc for yourself.
In addition, I believe it’s still the case that only U.S. citizens can apply for F31s and F32s. At least in the case of my NIA F99 RFA (aka “Request for Applications” – the NIH lingo for the specific instructions for each grant application cycle), there was not a U.S. citizenship requirement for applicants. However, make sure you check any citizenship requirements before starting the application process. If you are unsure if you’re eligible to apply, you can reach out to the listed Program Officer (PO) to clarify any questions.
What institutes have F99/K00 programs?
I applied to NIA: the National Institute on Aging. Since the Fall of 2019, it appears that they’ve continued to do one F99 application cycle per year. This is in contrast to F31/F32s, which have three application cycles per year.
You’ll want to look for RFAs calling for F99/K00 applications. For instance, here is the link to my RFA:
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/rfa-ag-20-009.html
This was from 2019. Each year, the RFA is updated somewhat and different items change. For instance, my application due date was October 22, 2019, but it looks like the newest NIA F99 RFA has a totally different due date:
NIA 2020 RFA (Oct. 22, 2020 due date): https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AG-21-022.html
NIA 2021 RFA (Feb. 3, 2022 due date): https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AG-22-026.html
So, you’ll want to be aware that due dates can change year to year – so pay attention to those department newsletters that usually contain award opportunities like these! A departmental email is how I first heard about the program. And, keep in mind that applications take a long time to write, so (try your best to) plan accordingly.
Before applying, you will need to check whether any institutes that fit with your research interests have F99/K00 programs. I know from reading others’ advice, NCI (the National Cancer Institute) also has an F99 program. For instance, here is NCI’s 2021 RFA:
https://www.cancer.gov/grants-training/training/funding/f99
There also appears to be an NIH F99/K00 award that falls under the D-SPAN program (Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience). D-SPAN awards have special eligibility requirements (so check these before applying!), but the gist of the funding is quite similar to mine. It also looks like the D-SPAN F99 has more than one application cycle per year, which is helpful:
https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Funding/Training-Career-Development/Award/F99K00-NIH-Blueprint-D-SPAN-Award
So, in general, if aging or cancer aren’t your thing, and you don’t qualify for a D-SPAN award, then you should run some searches to determine if other institutes are offering F99s yet. I imagine this program will become more common in the coming years.
Also note that you don’t necessarily need to have PhD training focused on the institute area. For example, my RFA said multiple times that it was not required to have aging-focused dissertation research. However, an aging-focused postdoc was required (as well as a training plan for transitioning from a different topic area to aging-focused research if your background was not in aging). I think there’s a number of possible strategies for aligning various research interests with NIH institute goals (which I’ll discuss in a later blog post) – so don’t immediately dismiss the F99 program if it’s not currently offered by the institute that you think fits your work best. More on this later.
When should I apply?
Typically, you’d apply near the end of your PhD. Currently, NIH says “in year 3 or 4 of PhD training” — though again, my recommendation is to check with your specific RFA to make sure that there are no additional eligibility criteria.
In my personal case, my PhD trajectory looked like this:
| PhD Year | Calendar Year | Location | Funding Source(s) |
| 1 | 2016-2017 | University of Michigan | Departmental TAship |
| 2 | 2017-2018 | University of Florida (our lab moved!) | NSF GRFP |
| 3 | 2018-2019 | University of Florida | NSF GRFP |
| 4 | 2019-2020 | University of Florida | NINDS T32 *Submitted F99 for October 22, 2019 deadline |
| 5 | 2020-2021 | University of Florida | NSF GRFP; terminated NSF when F99 funding started F99; funding started September 1, 2020 |
| 5.5 | 2021 – graduated!! | University of Florida | F99 |
So, I used 1.5 years of the “F” (doctoral) portion of my funding – though I could’ve gotten up to 2 years total of doctoral funding, if I had needed it.
If you look at my timeline, it should jump out that almost one full year elapsed between submitting my application and receiving the actual funding. This is an important timeline to consider, especially if you are nearing the end of your PhD or need funding quickly.
If I were to do it again, I would have applied during my third year rather than my fourth year. This would have made a bit more sense across the board. Applying earlier would’ve made it a bit easier to craft a solid doctoral training plan if I knew I would have two full years to carry it out. Additionally, it would have given me awesome peace of mind to know super early that I would have a ton of flexibility and options for postdoctoral positions.
However, in my case I could not apply earlier because the F99 (at least through NIA) did not exist yet! Fall 2019 was the first submission cycle for NIA F99/K00s.
How many F99/K00 application cycles occur per year?
Check your RFA. When I applied, NIA had only one cycle per year with an October due date. Now (meaning 2021/2022), it looks like NIA has a February due date, but still only one per year. The dates and timelines will likely continue to evolve and change over the coming years as they develop the program further – but keep in mind that, unlike an F31 or F32, you definitely can’t count on being able to submit > rejection + reviewer feedback > resubmit within the same calendar year.
What does the funding actually look like?
In my experience, the F99 funding was broken down into several parts:
Tuition: covered in full; this was money I never needed to pay any attention to – my “out of state” tuition at UF was paid in full by the F99 (directly from the F99 to UF – there was nothing special that I had to do). This included all of the random extra fees universities charge (e.g., “student activities fees”, etc.). I did not pay anything out of my own pocket to UF as a doctoral student.
Health insurance: (probably) covered in full, but somewhat dependent on your specific university. At UF, this is United Healthcare Student Resources insurance, which otherwise costs about $800-$900 out of pocket per semester to the student (the cost was raised each year). Turned out to be pretty terrible health insurance and full of problems getting the insurance activated at UF each semester, but that’s a conversation for another day… (and was specific to UF, not NIA). The takeaway is that you likely do get health insurance, and you don’t need to personally pay for it. The logistics of the insurance likely vary widely from school to school.
Stipend: your salary is set by NIH. The RFA likely states the stipend you’ll get. You can get a sense of NIH predoctoral stipends here: https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/salary-cap-stipends. For instance, at the time of writing the annual PhD student stipend was $25,863. This puts you above the federal poverty level for an individual! Huzzah! But under the federal poverty level if you have a family… Again, a conversation for another day. On this, I will note that you can and should apply for other awards as a PhD student. And, consider talking to your advisor about salary. There may be additional options for supplementing your pay. At some point I’ll make a post about the many small awards I was able to secure as a PhD student and my tricks for finding and winning them. *Also note that stipend specifics usually depend on your university, not NIA / NIH. It’s typically just that NIA will throw in $20-something-thousand towards your stipend, but your individual university might have different minimum stipends depending on local cost of living, bargaining success of their grad student union, etc. Your PI should be able to help give you a sense of whether there is any possibility of receiving a higher stipend than the one listed.
Bonuses: Carefully read the “Allowable Costs” section of your RFA, as this seems to change slightly each year — but note that you get some “bonus” money with both the F99 and K00 phases. In my case, my RFA stated:
The applicant should request an institutional allowance to help defray the cost of fellowship expenses such as health insurance, research supplies, equipment, books, and travel to scientific meetings. The annual institutional allowance level for the F99 phase is the same as that provided for the F31 Ruth L. Krischstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) awards (see https://researchtraining.nih.gov/resources/policy-notices), plus a one-time additional $1,500 in the first year of the F99 award to defray travel costs to an institution during the second year to meet the proposed mentor and to discuss and prepare a postdoctoral research and career development strategy.
Our grants people (aka the wonderful women at UF who helped me put together my application packet and actually submit it to the NIH – more on this later) wrote my F99 budget. Because of this “allowable costs” section, they were able to ask for some additional funds. This amounted to the $1,500 for travel to postdoc interview(s), plus several thousand dollars total for “research supplies, equipment, books, and travel to scientific meetings.” In my case, I was finished with my dissertation data collection by the time I actually received the F99 funding, so I primarily put the money towards travel, as well as some computing equipment. The specific rules will vary by RFA and your institution (e.g., can you buy a laptop with the money? can you pay participants with it? etc.) – but the main takeaway to know is that there is some extra money to help offset research and/or travel costs.
For the K00 postdoctoral phase, the funding situation is quite similar. Your health insurance and stipend are covered in full (and exceeds the federal poverty level, huzzah!). In my case, I also got $5,000 per year of similar “bonus” money, for research, travel, etc. costs. Again, great to have this extra $5K to e.g., cover all of my own conference travel – but do note that you’re still not being allotted significant money to fund your own experiments. This is still just intended to be supplemental money so that you’re not a burden on your advisor. Your advisor, however, is expected to have the big bucks to fund the actual research.
How early do I need to start?
Great question. Ideally, don’t follow my example. In my case:
- August 2019: heard about cool new NIA F99 program
- September 2019: “oh no this is going to be a lot of work!” > *spends most of September working on application*
- October 2019: grants people said I needed to be finished-finished by ~2 weeks before the deadline > ahhh! > submitted
This short timeline for my process was due entirely to not knowing about the program until August. And, this timeline was made possible by a fantastic advisor + fantastic committee members who provided with me very quick feedback. I also had the luxury of planning my own data collection schedule and being finished with my classes, so I was able to very flexibly clear out a large part of my September to work on writing.
In addition, I had already written some on my dissertation topics – e.g., through submitting >1 prior (unsuccessful, haha) grant and scholarship applications to other organizations. I had also already collected some dissertation data and written the code to preprocess and analyze the data, which made preliminary stats, power analyses, etc. relatively easy.
This all gave me a solid starting point. It would have been quite difficult to do a ~1 month turnaround if I had been starting from scratch.
There’s no good advice on how early to start writing a fellowship application, since so many factors will differ from person to person. However, the general advice is to start very early. If you know you want to write an F grant (F31 or F99) at some point during your PhD, talk to your advisor early (read: email them right now). Even if there’s no RFA yet, you can always start putting together certain pieces that do not change (e.g., biosketch). And, many STEM PhD programs ask for the thesis proposal formatted as an NIH-style F31, R21, etc. – so you may need to be working towards this formatting for your program anyhow!
I’m interested! Now what?
I plan to write several more blog posts with more details about the different pieces of an NIH fellowship application, the timeline, my personal tips for success, the K00 process, etc. I think that this is particularly important since the F99/K00 program is still quite new – I get a ton of questions from folks asking for advice, so I’m hoping that doing a series of blog posts will help to organize my answers to these questions and make them more broadly useful. And, this keeps me from sending 20-page overenthusiastic emails to anyone who asks me “hey what’s an F99?” 😉
If you’re considering writing an F99 and have further questions, please reach out to me. Chances are, someone else has the same question, and adding the answer to my blog might help them too.
Also, please feel free to email me and ask for my application. I’m more than happy to share my application and reviewer feedback. I think this is critical for success. I would have been totally lost writing a first NIH-style application without having seen others’ as examples. NIH is weird – so examples are super helpful.
At some point I’ll make a post with my full application and comments on what I now would recommend to do differently – but until that gets done, please email me if you’d like to see my app.
Email: kehupfeld@gmail.com
That’s all for now, but stay tuned for more!
Caveat to everything: Please note that I am writing this series of posts based on my experiences submitting an NIA F99/K00 application in the Fall of 2019. Should you apply, please make sure that you refer to your respective RFA, institute guidelines, etc – as these can change year to year. Also please note that these posts contain my personal [unfiltered] advice. Refer to your PI, university, program officer, etc. for more formal advice on these topics.